


One of the most basic rules for survival on any planet (is never to upset someone wearing black leather)

by romans



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, Labyrinth (1986)
Genre: F/M, WIP
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-01-29
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 09:55:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/660646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/romans/pseuds/romans
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It began, as so many things on the Discworld did, quite by accident. Someone at the University tried to make Octarine cologne. It combined all of the most pleasant and subtle scents known to mankind- crisp morning air, fields of nodding wildflowers, vanilla pods, chocolate chip cookies, really quality stew, aged whiskey, a crackling fire, freshly washed babies, and just a dab of New Book Smell. </p><p>Now, take all of those things and put them in a blender. The illegal, bloody, chunky, gelatinous, stinking, rotten and possibly glowing mess that results will smell <i>exactly</i> like Octarine cologne.</p><p>The mysterious alchemist decided, quite naturally, that the best thing to do with his creation was chuck it into the Ankh.</p><p>And that was when the real trouble started.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It began, as so many things on the Discworld did, quite by accident. Someone at the University1 tried to make Octarine cologne. It combined all of the most pleasant and subtle scents known to mankind- crisp morning air, fields of nodding wildflowers, vanilla pods, chocolate chip cookies, really quality stew2, aged whiskey, a crackling fire, freshly washed babies, and just a dab of New Book Smell. 

Now, take all of those things and put them in a blender. The illegal, bloody, chunky, gelatinous, stinking, rotten and possibly glowing mess that results will smell exactly like Octarine cologne. 

The mysterious alchemist decided, quite naturally, that the best thing to do with his creation was chuck it into the Ankh. 

And that was when the real trouble started. 

First the Ankh stopped smelling quite so awful. No one really noticed that, though, until it started _moving_. After a week it had gone from black to dark brown. Another week, and it could almost be called murky. It stopped expelling gas. Trees that had been growing for generations toppled over and were swept away on the sluggish current. 

Crowds of Morkporkians gathered to verify for themselves that there was running water, or something very much like it, in the Ankh. Within the month the water had gone from murky to sandy, and it even seemed faintly perfumed.

The entire town changed. The sun seemed to shine more brightly. Windows that had been painted shut were chiseled open. Clothing washed in the river came out literally sparkling clean, even those crusty underwear that were strictly for Special Occasions and hadn't been washed for a year. Clothes that had been washed in the river had a tendency to go missing afterwards, but no one thought anything of it.3

 

The Unseen University had developed an infestation of Goblins.4 They learned very quickly not to bother with the Library (Oooooooooook! translates to all languages, especially when it's backed up by the Encyclopedia Britannica), but the kitchens and the wizard's private stashes were free game. 

After two weeks of goblin infestation, Archchancellor Ridcully was on a mission to be rid of the blasted creatures for once and for all. They had all but cleaned out the University's pantries5, which should technically have been impossible. The cost would be phenomenal, and when the goblins finished off the last of the wizard's stores they were bound to move onto the city at large. Ridcully could practically feel the Patrician's gaze boring into the back of his neck. They weren't proper Morporkian goblins, anyhow. The final straw had been when his last batch of Wow-wow sauce went missing. 

He stormed out of his office, trailed by a growing group of anxious faculty, and marched to the library. He was a man on a mission. The librarian was of the same mind, because there was a book laid out waiting for the wizards when they arrived at the library. The right page was even marked with a helpful ribbon. Ridcully squinted at the tome suspiciously.

_To compell the Goblin Kinge, inscribe in a circle these runes and thene set a chiken therein._

Below that, in somewhat smaller, crabbed handwriting, the author had reluctantly written:

_Wishing away a childe will work also, but it ys not recommended. Only for fitness fanatics and those who lyke puzzles._

Another hand had added: _More trouble than it's worth._

Ridcully pursed his lips. None of the faculty, by dint of their profession, had managed to produce any children. And he couldn't bring himself to wish away someone else's child, no matter how dire the goblin situation was. 

"Bursar, I don't suppose we have any very young students?" 

The Bursar looked like he was going to have a heart attack. It probably wouldn't work anyways. Thaumatologically unsound, to be wishin' away a grown man. Also impractical. Who knew where he would end up? _And_ it went against Narrative, on top of that. 

No, runes and chickens would have to do it.

 

It took them longer than it should have to find a chicken, but early the next morning the senior faculty of the Unseen University were gathered in a closed Banqueting Hall. The Lecturer in Recent Runes had chalked out the runes as carefully as he could on the dusty floor, and Ponder Stibbons was clutching a wriggling chicken close to his chest. 

"When we get the Goblin King, what are we going to do?" he asked. 

"We're going to tell him to take his goblins back," Ridcully said, "before they eat us out of house and home." 

Stibbons approached the circle grimly. He privately had his doubts about this whole plan. Why should the Goblin King rein in his goblins? He felt like they were climbing out of the frying pan and into the fire. 

So it was life as usual in Ankh-Morpork, then. He threw the clucking hen into the circle and leapt back. 

Nothing happened. 

The chicken turned in a circle, clucking softly to herself, and then lunged for a fossilized breadcrumb on the floor. There was a small sonic boom and a burst of glitter and feathers. When the air cleared, there was a young woman standing in the middle of the ring. She had long black hair and eyes that could have been described as emerald or jade or even malachite but which were mostly just angry. She was also completely naked. 

They stared for a moment, and then Stibbons yanked the cloth off of a dusty buffet table and threw it over the girl's shoulders. 

"I thought it was supposed to compell the Goblin King to come," the Chair of Oblique Frogs said. 

"Where am I?" the young woman asked, pulling the tablecloth close. She stepped out of the circle and wrinkled her nose. 

"You're not the Goblin King?" Ridcully asked, because it paid to make sure sometimes. 

She glared at them. Ridcully took an instinctive step backwards and resisted the urge to make a protective sign. Even naked and wrapped in a tablecloth there was something very... _Weatherwax-y_ about the girl.

"My name is Sarah Williams," she said, "and you're going to tell me where I am _right now_."

1\. Who shall go unnamed for now, but Narrative Causality will give up his name soon enough.   
2\. This meant a two-to-one cow/horse ratio, with a bare minimum of rat.   
3\. They should have. There's always a catch to this sort of thing.   
4\. The entire city was infested, and the poultry population was suffering terribly, but the wizards were the only ones who knew what was going on. _They_ could see the nasty little buggers.   
5\. Ridcully disapproved of Competitive Eating in principle; in practice he recognized that it was one of the core pillars of the Unseen University.


	2. Chapter 2

"Well, you're in Ankh-Morpork, Mistress Williams," Ponder Stibbons said. Sarah relaxed fractionally. 

"So I'm not in the Labyrinth?" Sarah asked. 

"Labyrinth?" Ridcully said. "No. We have one somewhere but no one's been able to find it." 

"We seem to have summoned you by mistake," Stibbons said. 

Sarah contemplated this for a moment6 and then got back to the important thing:

"Can you un-summon me?" she asked. Stibbons looked anxiously to the Archchancellor. 

The Bursar, in an uncharacteristic display of lucidity, had latched on to a salient point: Sarah Williams had been brought here by the spell. She might be able to get them the Goblin King. 

"I don't suppose you know the Goblin King?" he asked. His eye twitched a little, but his voice was steady.

"No," Sarah snapped, a little more harshly than she'd meant to. "And why am I naked? You've made a mistake and you need to send me back home now."

"It'll be the transdimensional travel," piped up the Professor of Dust, Fluff, and Miscellaneous Particles from the back of the room. "We're still working out how to call up clothes. Besides, the people on t' other side usually worry about that kind of thing."

"They usually send themselves back, too," Stibbons said apologetically. 

Because Sarah was Sarah, she did not burst into tears or allow herself to slip into self-pity. Panic was an option, certainly, but she'd been in worse situations than this. She would get home, even if it meant calling on _him_.

"Wait-" she said. " _Why_ do you want J- the Goblin King?" Something was niggling at the pit of her stomach 7.

"We have a _situation_ ," Ridcully said grimly. Sarah nodded absently. She was following her nose. There was something familiar in the air...

Something... 

She went to the open window and the stench hit her all at once. It was diluted, to be sure, but the smell of the Bog of Eternal Stench wasn't something you ever forgot. She pressed the back of her hand to her nose at the memory. 

Someone handed her a lacy handkerchief. Sarah took it gratefully and then froze. 

There is a particular kind of horror to thinking that you're home alone, safe and sound, and then realizing _after_ you've locked the doors that someone has been in your house, standing in the shadowy corner of your living room, _for the whole time_. Or glancing outside your window at night and finding a face looking right back at you. It's known to scribes and playwrights as a jump scare, but Sarah and the wizards were doing quite the opposite of jumping. They were staring, frozen, at the man 8 who was lounging in the window sill. 

The Goblin King had gone all out. He was wearing a ruffled white shirt with a matching cravat9 under a spangled black jacket and over a pair of uncomfortably close-fitting grey trousers. His shapely calves were encased in a pair of black riding boots, which had to be admired, if only to draw the eye away from his trousers. The wizards shifted a little in their comfortable robes, making minute adjustments, and stepped back to confer amongst themselves. 

He hadn't been there, and now he was, and no one was quite sure how long he'd been sitting there. It was an unsettling feeling. Sarah, for her part, was seriously considering giving him a good hard shove. Six stories wouldn't do him any real harm, but she was certain it would make _her_ feel better.

Jareth smiled at her, viciously, as if he knew what she was thinking. 

"You have my attention, gentlemen," he said, turning to look at the wizards. His trousers did interesting things when he stood up, and his shoulders glittered in the heavy sunlight. Stibbons plucked forlornly at the chicken leavings decorating his grubby robe. 

The Goblin King set a heavy hand on Sarah's shoulder, and a lacy white dress materialized on her skin. She tried not to let her relief show. 

"There were easier and more... intelligent ways to get it," the King said, "but she's here, so I came." The hand on Sarah's shoulder became more proprietary. She wrenched out of his grip and turned on him. The dress tingled warningly against her skin, but she ignored it. She'd face him naked if she had to. 

"Leave me out of this, Jareth," she hissed. "This is between you and them. It has nothing to do with me! They're your goblins!" 

"I don't care about the _goblins_ ," Jareth said. "I have plenty where those came from. _You_ , on the other hand..." 

She flushed, suddenly, and wondered why she'd done it. It wasn't like she'd never gotten attention from men. 

"I came for you, Sarah," he said. He lifted her chin with one gloved finger, and his eyes were so... were so...

 

Ridcully, recognizing a dangerous genre shift when he saw one, cleared his throat. The Goblin King frowned and turned away from Sarah Williams. 

"Sir- your Majesty-" Ridcully said, struggling to remember the proper addresses, "We're not saying you caused the goblin infestation, seein' as that would be an act of war, but we would greatly appreciate your assistance in getting rid of the little buggers."

Stibbons coughed urgently. 

If the King hadn't been wearing gloves he would have been examining his nails. 

"If you'll pardon my Klatchian." Ridcully added. The King looked up, eyes narrowed. 

"I'll take my goblins once you fix your _river_ ," Jareth said. 

" _Fix_ it?" said one of the younger lecturers, a little more loudly than he had intended to. 

"Your infernal river wrecked my bog!" The King snapped, with far more gravitas than anyone wearing pants like that should have been able to call up. The air around him crackled with magic, and the wizards shot nervous looks at each other from under their hats. On the surface the Goblin King had plenty in common with them- ridiculous hair10, an appreciation for spangled clothes, a preoccupation with transfiguration and interdimensional travel11\- but they suddenly remembered that they had Summoned him. 

Collectively they began to recall the other eldritch horrors they had Summoned. 

The wizards edged a little further away from Jareth.

6\. There were some crossed wires here. Sarah, was, of course, talking about the Goblin King's Labyrinth, which was altogether too large. Ridcully was talking about Bloody Stupid Johnson's Labyrinth. It was so small that people got lost trying to find it.  
7\. Not the back of her mind. The Bog of Eternal stench tended to leave a stronger impression on other organs.  
8\. More of an approximate label than a true description. The best word to describe the Goblin King is _old_. Sarah could probably expand that list.  
9\. It was pinned with a fetching cameo locket that bore a striking resemblance to a one Sarah Williams, if one cared to look.  
10\. It was an acceptable alternative to a silly hat, in their eyes.  
11\. All good traditional wizarding occupations.


	3. Chapter 3

"S'a- god?" Ridcully had thought of something, but he was having trouble articulating it. 

"The King?" Stibbons was gazing into his glass of yksihw. It didn't contain the answers to the Universe, but there were a few chunks of unidentifiable _stuff_ at the bottom. Apparently it was a sign of quality. 

The wizards had decided that retreat was the better part of valor and were huddled around a bottle of yksihw in the Bursar's office. 

"Feel bad about leaving her," Stibbons said. 

"Shsfne," Runes said. His voice was a little muffled by the wood of the table. They all weighed the odds of a fight between Sarah and The Goblin King, and came up with the odds in the King's favor a million to one, which meant that Sarah would win out in the end. Odds like that never let you down. That was classic heroin', no doubt about it. And, privately, some of the wizards suspected that the real power was in Sarah's hands. 

"It's like-um- he's not human." The archchancellor was trying again. He had the answer right there- "He takes babies, right? That were wished away. People _wish_ for him. That sounds like a god to me. 'r at least a... a-" he grasped for a word that meant _exists because people believe in him but isn't actually worshipped_. "Monster!" he finished, triumphantly.

He slapped his hand against the table and startled Runes out of a sound sleep.

"People stop wishin' away their babies, he stops existing," he concluded. 

It was a nice conclusion, but it wouldn't do anything to solve their current conundrum. He groped a bit more. Stibbons slid his glass across the table and gave him what he hoped was an encouraging expression. 

"How do we fix the Ankh?" Stibbons asked, when it became apparent that the archchancellor had chased that line of logic as far as it was going to go. 

"We dunno what happened to it," said the Senior Wrangler. 

"Magic," someone said darkly. 

Runes sat up suddenly, startling everyone around him. 

"I know how to fix it!" he said.

They waited expectantly. 

"Time!" Runes said. "Give it- what- two months? Tops? People are still dumping their leavings and- uh- well. Two months of Assassinations and Ankh-Morpork living will absolutely ruin it. An' the magic will wear off soon. Has to."

"We could always tip Dibbler in," the Wrangler said in an undertone. 

The sound of creaking pipes filtered into their little room. It was followed shortly by a distant, watery explosion. The goblins had gotten into the Patent 'Typhoon' Superior Indoor Ablutorium with Automatic Soap Dish. 

The archchancellor's glass shattered in his hand, and the rest of the wizards politely pretended not to notice. No one liked to talk about the Archchancellor's PTSIAWASD11

" _Takes too long_ ," he said. Runes poured a generous measure of yksihw and passed it to him. 

The Bursar was lying on his bed, clutching dreamily at the straps that kept him grounded12. 

"Why Sarah?" he asked. The wizards turned to look at him curiously. He was almost making sense.

"What if _Sarah_ is the spell?" he said. "He said he came because of _her_. What if- what if he came because she made him?" 

The faculty paused to consider this. There is a subtle degree of difference between "she made him come" and "she _made_ him" which can make all the difference in dealing with Eldritch Horrors. It was the point that Ridcully had been ponderously groping for earlier. 

"He _is_ suspiciously good looking," the Dean said. 

"And those trousers!" said the Senior Wrangler. 

"But what about all those people wishing their babies away? They believe in him, too," Stibbons pointed out. Theology wasn't his strong point, but even he could see that Sarah wasn't the only one who believed in the Goblin King13.

"She could've believed him a little bit _nicer_ ," Runes muttered quietly.

"I expect it's part of the fun," the Wrangler said. 

 

Jareth was slouched on the window sill again, juggling his infernal crystals. Sarah was sitting at one of the banquet tables, trying to come to terms with her life. She wasn't very afraid of Jareth, not really. She strongly suspected that the worst thing he could do to her was kiss her. What had been big and frightening when she was fifteen was, now, average-sized and unimpressive.

"Why can't you just send the goblins back home?" she asked. The crystals evaporated, and Jareth looked faintly pained. 

"I could collect every single goblin here and they would be back within the hour," he said. He looked up at her.

"Do you remember my bog, Sarah?" he asked. She shuddered involuntarily.

"How could I _not_?" she said. 

He smiled, and tipped his head out the window. "That river there flows through time and space and gathers in my bog14," he said. "The bog of Eternal Stench is one of the few things that keeps my kingdom from descending into total anarchy."

"What about your magic?" Sarah asked. 

"The threat of a good Bogging hangs over every subject in my kingdom. Without that I have to throw them into the trash heap or kill them outright." Jareth's mouth twisted in disgust. "And that's not any way to rule a kingdom, Sarah. Soon I'll have no goblins left!" 

"You could always give them to the Fierys," Sarah muttered, not without a touch of bitterness. She had never been able to look at flamingos in quite the same way after the Labyrinth. 

"Who says I haven't?" Jareth said. He had somehow sunk even deeper into his slouch. 

"I need that Bog, Sarah," he said, darkly. "It's the only thing standing between my kingdom and utter chaos." 

 

11\. It stemmed from an unfortunate incident when the Librarian was playing Bubbla's _Catastrophe_ suite on the UU organ, having engaged the afterburner, while the Archchancellor was having a shower.  
12\. He sometimes forgot to believe in gravity.   
13\. Low-density intense blasts of Belief and Intention from harried siblings and mothers 'round the world had had an effect, but in Sarah's case, True Love and Destiny came into play. They were annoyingly persistent bastards with a flair for drama. They played merry hell other abstract concepts' calendars and were universally hated by their peers.   
14\. There was once a dog who birthed a litter under the walls of the Unseen University. Most of the puppies grew up to be unremarkable, flea-bitten, scrappy street dogs. One of them named himself Didymus and went off Adventuring. 


End file.
